Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime unveiled

I guess the PR department in Asus just couldn’t take the hounding anymore from journalists. Just a few hours back, Asus officially unveiled their greatest weapon, the Transformer Prime. This 10.1-inch Honeycomb beast raises the bar a notch higher, as it becomes the thinnest (8.3mm), lightest (586g) and most powerful tablet, whenever it launches in the market. The Prime will go on sale worldwide, starting December, with the 32GB model for $499 and the 64GB one for $599. There’s no mention about 3G data support, so we assume the Wi-Fi only models will be available, initially. The keyboard dock will be sold separately for $149.

The best tablet yet?

All our previous suspicions and rumours have been realised with the Prime. Some of them include the new 1280 x 800 Super IPS+ display with a Gorilla Glass protective covering. The display is capable of a blinding 600nits of brightness, which is higher than even some desktop displays. Powering it is Nvidia’s latest Tegra 3 SoC (System on Chip), which is a quad-core monster living inside this 8.3mm thin aluminium chassis. Another area to grab the ‘first-ever’ title is the camera, which is now an 8MP autofocus shooter with an LED flash. It also features a larger F2.4 aperture and back illuminated CMOS sensor (like the iPhone4), which is the first for a tablet. Other features include touch-to-focus, depth of field and low-light noise reduction.

Transformer Prime doing its thing

In the sound department, Asus have added their SonicMaster technology for better audio. Other features include microSD card slot, 3.5mm combo audio jack, micro HDMI and the dock will feature a USB 2.0 port and full sized SD card slot. The 22Wh battery in the tablet should be able to churn out 12hrs of battery life and this is without the dock. Software wise, the apps will be similar to the ones we saw in the Transformer (TF101/G), which included SuperNote and Polaris Office. This will ship with Android (3.2 mostly) Honeycomb, initially, but will be getting Ice Cream Sandwich in ‘early December’. Here are the highlights once more:

• 10.1-inch Super IPS+ capacitive touchscreen with a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution

• Wi-Fi, DLNA with hotspot creativity

• GPS with A-GPS support

• Bluetooth

• 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, video capture up to 1920 x 1080 resolution

• 3.5mm earphone socket

• 32GB/64GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB

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source: http://tech2.in.com/news/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-unveiled/256172

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Posted in Asus Transformer Prime , asus Transformer Prime price , asus Transformer Prime Release , asus Transformer Prime Spec , asus Transformer Prime Tablet

iTwin Review

Transferring data from one PC to another can be difficult, especially if it's a large amount of data. For example, if you want to send some data to somebody in another country, you’re going to have to go through the hassle of either sending it via e-mail, or upload it to some file hosting service. Chances are, if your file is too large, you’ll probably need to buy more storage. Enter iTwin. This new USB dongle/USB drive allows users to remotely access data from anywhere in the world. It’s a one time investment, but is it worth your money? Read on to find out.      

Works on PC and Mac

Features
The method of operation for the iTwin is surprisingly simple. First you connect the device to your local computer, which has all your data stored. Depending upon your internet connection, it will take a few seconds to install the necessary plug-ins and files for iTwin to work on your PC or Mac. Once that’s done, a folder named iTwin gets automatically created and you can transfer the data you want remote access to, to that particular folder. Thereafter, you can plug-in the other half of the drive to any computer (connected to the Internet), anywhere in the world and you can access your files on-the-go. The important thing to mention out here is that none of the data is stored on the drive. The drive only stores the log files, so in case you happen to lose one half of the drive, you need to simply unplug the one connected to your local computer and your data is safe. Also, there’s an option to password protect the drive. If you happen to lose both halves, you can use your registered email address to disable them. So, privacy options are pretty much covered.

Impressive features

The second and equally important reason is, how secure is this device? Well, according to the company, the iTwin USB drive has a two-factor authentication scheme (hardware device + password). The two iTwins together generate a random 256-bit AES key, everytime they are physically paired and plugged into a computer. When two halves of the iTwin are paired, the owner is sent a Remote Disable Code (through e-mail), which can be used to break the connection between the two iTwins. Using this disable code, if an iTwin is missing, it can be disabled remotely. All data traffic is first compressed and then encrypted. Before allowing any data transfer, every iTwin is authenticated by iTwin's TwinTrust servers. All communication between iTwin and TwinTrust is secured using the HTTPS (RSA 1024 bit, 128 bit RC4) protocol. There are no storage limitations and you can put your entire hard disk onto the cloud.

As simple as sync, unplug and plug

Peformance
Setting up the device for usage is extremely simple, as compared to setting up a virtual private network for sharing of files. We put a 200 MB file up for sharing and access to it was almost instantaneous. There are a lot of factors involved, though, the main one being how fast your Internet is. Accessing, copying and remotely editing files on computer A from computer B, and on B from A works brilliantly smoothly and the files are available on both A and B. Removing any of the iTwins instantly stops data sharing between the two.

The initial setup takes about two minutes on a decent network connection

We tried checking if any temporary files or folders were created as it’s important when you’re accessing your personal data from a public computer. When you plug-in the device, temp files are created, but they are mainly log files, which get wiped out automatically once the device is removed. Dumping files via network shared computers was pretty easy. All in all, this device works pretty smoothly.

Cableless iTwin drive - a worthy buy

Verdict
So, in this age of cloud storage being provided by a whole range of companies (like Dropbox, YouSendIt), does this device really stand a chance? Well, the answer to this depends on your usage. If you’re an extremely basic user, who just wants to get remote access to pictures and a few documents, the iTwin may be a little expensive. But, for those having 2GB or 5GB limitation issues on the various cloud storage sites, this one’s a must buy. The plain reason being that with iTwin you can put your entire hard disk onto the cloud. Though speed over the Internet might be limited, this device doesn’t have any limitation in terms of data storage. Secondly, there’s this issue about security problems with services like Dropbox and, as mentioned earlier, iTwin is relatively more secure. At Rs. 4,990, it’s a one time investment and definitely worth the purchase.

source: http://tech2.in.com/reviews/general/itwin-review/255812

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Posted in iTwin , iTwin Mac , iTwin Mac Review , iTwin Mac Software , iTwin PC , iTwin PC Review , iTwin PC Software , iTwin Review , iTwin Software , iTwin Software Review , iTwin Specs

Lava S12 Smartphone Review

Lava mobile has established itself as a mobile phone manufacturer that has the best interests of the Indian market at heart. So far, they have churned out a variety of handsets covering the basic candy bar phone, the QWERTY keypad option and even a couple of budget touch screen phones, but none of them have managed to make much of a splash in Indian mobile phone market pool. Lava have now joined the wide array of budget Android phone manufacturers with this their first Android-powered phone, the S12. With so many successful budget phones and global manufacturers to compete with, let’s see if Lava has done enough to be worth your while.

Design and Build
At first glance the S12 looks like a fusion of the Sony Ericsson Arc and an HTC handset. The build quality is fairly sturdy, although made of plastic, and the phone looks quite professional and stylish. The 3.2-inch touch screen with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels along with four standard Android navigation and menu buttons are all that occupy the front face. The removable back panel and a small lower portion of the front face are made of plastic with a leather texture that gives the user a good grip and the matt finish of the phone makes it quite immune to visible scratches. The phone weighs 120 grams and is quite comfortable to use.

The leather finish adds a touch of class

The power button and rocker keys for volume control are located on one side of the phone while the other side houses a slot for the micro SD card, the USB port, 3.5mm jack and a physical button for the camera.

Features
Interface
The S12 is armed with a Qualcomm 600 MHz processor and comes with only 120MB of internal memory which gave us the impression that the phone would be sluggish, especially since it runs Lava’s 3D UI which is a modified version of the popular SPB Shell home launcher that is quite heavy on graphics. Surprisingly though, the phone manages to handle the load of the heavy home launcher quite well, giving the user a fairly stylish 3D UI. Navigation across home screens is a visual treat with the 3D transitions and customisable home screens mean you will rarely have to access the app drawer.

Slightly customised version of SPB Shell 3D UI

The phone ships with Android 2.2 (FroYo) and the default home screen settings give you 8 panels to navigate across, with widgets for weather updates, flickr, calendar and multimedia. You can also view all 8 home screens in preview mode which gives you a pretty cool animation of each home screen. We tested the phone with a few benchmark apps and AnTuTu gave us a benchmark score of 983. The Linpack Multi-Thread test gave the phone an MFLOPS score of 6.399, while it got a score of 7.476 in the single thread test. That’s not the greatest score but for a 600MHz processor, and taking real-time functioning into account, it was pretty fair all the same.

Media
Lava has stuck with Android’s default music and video players, offering the basic customisation options and widgets. The phone is loaded with great quality speakers with a good bass range and the headphones also provide good quality sound. The phone supports MP4, AVI, MPG and WMV video file formats and MP3, WAV and AAC audio formats out of the box. The 600 Mhz processor is incapable of running 720p or 1080p HD videos but 480p videos run smoothly and the powerful speakers are great for watching a movie or a video indoors. The headset also gives crisp and clear sound so this phone is a definite yes for multimedia use.

Connectivity
The phone comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with hotspot capabilities, Bluetooth 2.1, 3G with HSDPA speeds of 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA speeds of 384 kbps. The external memory can be expanded up to 32GB, and is easily accessible for hot swapping. There’s also GPS with A-GPS support for navigation.

A few Indian Apps

The 120 MB inbuilt memory is enough only for the bare essentials along with the preloaded apps and the relatively heavy UI so the phone did perform a little sluggishly when running a few apps simultaneously so multi-tasking isn’t its strong point. After prolonged use even the lock screen took a second to respond. Installing a cache cleaner and tweaking the task killer to kill apps frequently will help improve the performance.

Misc. Features
Lava have added a few India-specific apps to the S12 like SAAVN which is a Bollywood music streaming app and the Times of India Android app for news updates. There’s also Facebook for Android, Zenga mobile TV with a free one year subscription, and a couple of games with the S12 to attract buyers. Lava have also diverted from the stock Android keyboard and implemented the popular SlideIT keyboard as the default for their phone.

Camera
The phone comes with a 5 megapixel camera that is little above average at best. The image captures are fairly decent outdoors without much graininess and decent colour depth but indoors and specifically in low lighting the camera struggles, giving dull and soft photos. There is also an issue with the camera’s performance. The sluggishness of the phone really comes to light with the camera, which takes a long time to start and there is a prolonged delay from the time the capture button is pressed to the actual image capture.

Image qaulity is quite decent

This often results in the photo being captured after you have already lowered the camera, offset photos or blurry shots. The camera does have an autofocus feature but it isn’t very good at detecting near range objects and the phone is best used for just casual photography. There’s also video recording at 480p but that’s pretty standard and there’s nothing really stand out about the camera features.

Battery life
This is where the S12 really impresses. You would expect an above average battery life considering the 600 Mhz processor and the 3.2-inch display device is powered by a 1300 mAh Lithium-ion battery but the S12 goes way beyond above average. We first put it through the video drain test and the phone gave us an astounding 9 hours and 10 minutes of video playback. We then put the handset through our tech2 Loop Test, the first loop consisting of two hours each of audio, video and streaming and one and a half hour of call time. The subsequent loops consisted of one hour each of audio, video and streaming along with 1 hour of talk time and the phone battled through the first two loops before dying at the start of the third loop, 30 minutes into video playback.

Hot Swap slot for the memory card

That’s really impressive in terms of battery life. Under normal usage, we managed to get almost two days of frequent calls and messages as well as a few hours of wi-fi usage with automatic brightness switched on. Lava have a real hit as far as battery life is concerned.

Verdict
The Lava S12 is priced at Rs. 9,990 and at this price it competes with the likes of the HTC Explorer and the LG Optimus One. The Explorer has been quite impressive and the Optimus One has lasted over a year and with similar specs to these big brand devices the S12 might take a hit. One major concern is the Android developers support the device would receive, including official OS upgrades, root kits and ROMs considering this is not an International brand. The impressive battery life is undone by the sluggish performance and in its price range, the S12 might struggle to compete with the international brands like HTC, LG and Samsung.

source:    http://tech2.in.com/reviews/smartphones/lava-s12-smartphone-review/256102

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Posted in Lava S12 , Lava S12 Price , Lava S12 Price in India , Lava S12 Review , Lava S12 Review India , Lava S12 XT311 , Motorola smartphone Review

Grand Theft Auto V wish list

Excited about GTA V? Us too which is why we've been spending sleepless night fantasizing about Rockstar's next open world game.

Now that Grand Theft Auto V has been officially announced, the world’s gone into overdrive with speculation. We jump aboard the bandwagon with few of our ideas, which we hope would make it to the game. Rockstar, are you listening?  Better economy Add caption How would you like this as your safehouse? Games like GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption allowed players to earn money through both main and side quests, but with nothing worth really spending your money on, your income felt redundant. Ten hours into GTA IV and I had enough money to buy my own country, but all I could really buy were weapons and ammunition for those weapons. For GTA V it would be nice if I could actually put my money to good use. At least this way, I’m motivated to rake in the moolah. Improved quest system GTA IV had way too many “go here and kill this random dude” kind of quests for its own good. It was either that or stupid fetch quests. Rockstar definitely need to add-in a ton of mission variety into GTA V. Adding stealth missions would also be a good change of pace with the inclusion of silenced weapons and the ability to actually plan your missions a la Hitman. Stalk your prey and kill him/her when they enter a dark alley, sabotage the brakes in their car to make it look like an accident or enter their house at night and kill them in their sleep. All effective ways to vanish without a trace. Plus adding in the random encounters from Red Dead Redemption would be a pretty sweet idea, too.  Rewarding side quests Reward people for helping out the law Side quests should also make sense and should reward the player with something more than money. For example, tackling cop missions should enable players to actually hack into the police database and get the dope on potential future targets. This way if you have to whack someone and know the places he visits regularly, you don’t have to tail him through all the traffic. You could even maybe set up an ambush for him. Better combat system Fight Club The hand to hand combat system in GTA IV was not all that hot. In fact, it was pretty rigid and useless. Implementing the one from L.A. Noire will go a long way in making fist fights more immersive. Similarly, they need to tighten up gunplay, as well, something on the lines of Red Dead Redemption with a smooth and fluid looking cover system to boot. Verticality Rooftop attack FTW! In an urban open world environment, it’s a real pity to restrict all the gun fights to the streets. GTA V should allow players to tackle them anyway they seem fit, so if I feel I’m at an advantage after climbing a roof top, let me do so. I’m not saying make me like Ezio from Assassin’s Creed, but adding a bit of verticality to this series wouldn’t really hurt. After all, that was promised to us for GTA IV. source: http://tech2.in.com/features/gaming/grand-theft-auto-v-wish-list/256092

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Posted in Grand Theft Auto V , Grand Theft Auto V announced , GTA V , GTA V announced , GTA V news , GTA V news 2011 , GTA V trailer , GTA V trailer November 2011 , Rockstar , Rockstar games

Blind with Camera: A Change of Perspective

The idea of the blind and visually impaired dabbling in photography may sound a bit bizarre at first, but thanks to Partho Bhowmick and his Blind with Camera initiative, it’s bound to change.

If someone one had told me a month ago about visually impaired people taking up photography, I wouldn’t have believed it. But having met Partho Bhowmick, initiator of the Blind with Camera project and witnessed one of his blind student take pictures, my perception has changed. I met Partho at Antarchakshu - The Eye Within, an event organized by the students of Xavier’s Resource Center for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC) in Mumbai. The event provides a glimpse into the world of the visually impaired. Also on exhibition at the event were pictures clicked by visually challenged students, who had learnt photography under the Blind with Camera project. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. These pictures especially had stories behind them and presented a new perspective. From a professional photographer’s point of view, they may not be all that well framed or composed, but they serve the intended purpose as they provide us with a fleeting glimpse into the world of a visually impaired person. The Journey Who would have thought that a visually challenged person could take photographs? No one; not even Partho, who worked as an IT Manager with Pidilite Industries. This was until he came across a magazine feature about a French blind photographer. Partho, an avid photographer, was intrigued and established contact with him. He says, “I got inspired by his work and his philosophy on why a blind person should engage in visual art. He also connected me to a consortium, Art Beyond Sight, where blind artists could post their activities online. From 2004 to 2005, I did independent research work, interacting with blind artist across the world.” Convinced, he decided to take it ahead in India, and his journey began in 2005. He shared his ideas with the National Association of Blind (NAB), and conducted sessions with the visually challenged to see their reaction. From 10 students in 2006, today he has over 100. Faces The Process Partho explains how he goes about teaching the visually impaired. “First you need to understand the nature of blindness they have. Somebody who is late blind always tries to recall their memories and tries to reconcile with the visual reality. All these guys, irrespective of the kind of blindness, have a process of generating images in their mind. They cannot escape visual reality, that’s for sure. The image formation in their mind happens with the help of touch, sound, etc. So, for a late blind, there is reconciliation of this memory and the visual reality. They may take a picture of the shadow, because they know what a shadow is and can feel it due to the difference in temperature. On the other hand, born blind can always end up surprising you. This is because they have no reference points and their images are absolutely abstract. They rely on touch and sound. People with low vision, which includes people who can only see far away objects, and people with peripheral vision distortion, who can only see what’s straight ahead of them make maximum use of their residual sight, and the photographs they take are very true to the ones taken by sighted people.” source: http://tech2.in.com/features/cameras/blind-with-camera-a-change-of-perspective/255782

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Posted in Antarchakshu , Blind photography , Blind with Camera project , Photography , Photography for the blind , The Eye Within , Xavier’s Resource Center for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC)

Nvidia Tegra 3 raises the bar for mobile devices

Nvidia have used the Asus Transformer Prime as a platform to showcase just what their latest and greatest creation is capable of. Their new quad-core monster of aN SoC (System on Chip) is currently in production and will be hitting mobile devices, mostly tablets, towards the end of December. The Transformer Prime is obviously the first ever retail product to sport this new chip and through a mutual understanding between the two companies, they’ll both be pimping each others technology and advancements.

A quick comparo

After a quick comparison with the Tegra 2, we see that Kal-El is still using ARM Cortex-A9 CPU cores, only four of them, instead of two. It’s even based on the same 40nm fabrication process, which means power consumption should be more or less the same. That’s where the similarities end though, Nvidia have added a fifth ‘Companion Core’, which runs at 500MHz and claims it’s the reason devices will see a better battery life with Tegra 3. This is how the Transformer Prime is able to achieve its 12-hr battery life during video playback. There’s also an ARM NEON instruction set added and HDMI 1.4 support for higher bandwidth in 3D videos. The graphics portion of the SoC has also gotten a big bump and the GPU now has 12 cores which they claim, provides three times the power of Tegra 2.

By the end of 2011, Nvidia claim to have up to 15 Tegra 3 optimized games for their Tegra Zone store. Some games that we know off include Shadowgun, Riptide GP, Sprinkle, Big Top HD, among others. Some of the key features include:

• World’s first quad-core ARM Cortex-A9

• vSMP technology which in includes a fifth low powered core for better battery life

• New video engines with support for 1080p video at 40Mbps

• 3x higher memory bandwidth   

• 2x faster image processing

• Supports hardware acceleration of Flash Player 11, HTML 5 and WebGL browsing

• HDMI 1.4

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source: http://tech2.in.com/news/cpus/nvidia-tegra-3-raises-the-bar-for-mobile-devices/256232

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Posted in Nvidia Tegra 3 , nvidia Tegra 3 Asus , nvidia Tegra 3 Demo , nvidia Tegra 3 Devices , nvidia Tegra 3 Netbook , nvidia Tegra 3 Phone , nvidia Tegra 3 Release Date , nvidia Tegra 3 Tablet